COLUMN: To what bright glory?

From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '96 From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '96A Commencement address that wasn't, butFrom Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '96A Commencement address that wasn't, butprobably should have been. From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '96A Commencement address that wasn't, butprobably should have been.The Class of 1996 will graduate on May 21. I won't be speaking at Commencement, but if I were, I'd give 'em hell: Some have been positive. We arrived at a school plagued by political correctness. Today the speech code is dead and an end to segregated housing is on the horizon. Most of the dorms have cable now. And Sheldon Hackney isn't president anymore. But as I leave, I look at the direction in which the University is headed, and I am overwhelmed with frustration. When we got here, Penn was the party school of the Ivies. There was a brilliant social life on campus. Every weekend night, Locust Walk was alive and vibrant. That's over now. University administrators killed Penn's social life while we stood by and watched. When the administration banned alcohol on the steps of the Palladium, there was a protest. A bunch of seniors showed up and drank alcohol in brown bags. It made a powerful statement, but the will to repeat it every day wasn't there. Students just gave up and let administrators have their way. Then the Greek system began to feel the pinch, so fraternities took action. In the spring when prospective students were visiting, houses put up banners saying, "Why pay the bucks if the social life sucks?" This campaign would have done some good, but IFC leaders urged the houses to take them down, naively believing they should work with administrators. The administrators, of course, weren't interested in Greek desires; they only wanted the banners taken down. As the banners fell, so did any sustained effort to save the social life on campus. The Class of 1999 can't even imagine what Locust Walk used to be like on a Friday night. We could tell them, "Imagine every weekend was like Spring Fling," but that analogy doesn't quite work anymore. On the first night of Spring Fling, the administration killed yet another remnant of the way things used to be. All the apologists who said, "It's not the administration, it's the legal system" or "It's the trustees" or "It's the Greek Alumni Council," saw on Spring Fling what is really going on. The University invited the LCE onto campus to fine students. They asked the state to break up our parties and kill Spring Fling. Why, a freshman asked me, would they want to kill our social life? Don't they realize it is what attracts us to Penn? Yes, they realize it exactly. They are trying to change it because they don't want to attract us to Penn. They want to attract a different kind of student. They want to find people who will be excited by their plans for a college house themed around "research." They don't want the University to have intellectual niches students can find; they want the University to be a giant coffeehouse on poetry-reading night. But, the freshman countered, don't the administrators understand that bookworms aren't the people who go on to be successful? That the people who accumulate great achievements and live happy lives are those who study but also make friends, get involved, join fraternities and sororities, perform, compete and learn to live? No, they don't understand, I explained, because they didn't do any of those things. Instead, they became college administrators. They're changing the University for the worse, and we're letting them get away with it. Over Spring Fling, the LCE came and we ran. No kegs on the porch, the University told residents of Sansom Street, and the kegs went inside. When the police decided it was time for the party to end, everyone scurried off. There was no spirit left to be broken. As undergraduates, there's very little we can do; we move on, they stay here. They know they can just wait us out, and in a few years no one will remember how it used to be. No one will know what they have taken from us. But for the Class of 1996, the time of impotence is over. The University is controlled by the timeless duo of money and power, represented here by alumni and trustees. It won't be too long before some of us are trustees, and we are all about to become alumni. We must decide how to play that role. Soon, the University will be calling us, looking for money. Should we give? Most assuredly, yes. But not blindly. We should pay attention to what is going on at Penn, and use our money to guide the University in the right direction. For example, if they ask us to contribute to a new student center, we should give generously. But, we should collectively demand that our money be used not as part of scheme to renovate old buildings, but rather to construct something that will actually benefit students. When dealing with the administration, there must be a presumption of guilt. If they want money for something, it's probably a bad idea -- like turning Superblock into graduate housing. But within the lunacy, there may be a silver lining -- building a second Quad-like residence. As alumni, we need to use our influence, energy and cash to help the cream rise to the top. The administration has ended the independence of the alumni magazine and turned it into a propaganda sheet. We will have to turn elsewhere to find out what's really going on. So we must keep in touch with the organizations we are involved in -- and painful as it is for some of us, we must keep reading the DP, either on line or by subscribing to The Weekly Pennsylvanian. Our chance to make a difference begins now. The University has given us so much, and it is our obligation to return the favor. We now hold the burden of preserving the University of our memories rather than letting it become a laboratory for administrators' dreams. We must stay vigilant. They can only win if we let them.